Anthony Watts from “Watts Up with That?” Receives Prestigious Award for His Work on Climate Change

Anthony Watts, a friend and fellow blogger on NorCal blogs, has recently received a well deserved science award at the International Climate Change Convention in Canada. Click here to watch the video.

Anthony’s blog is rated as the most viewed science and weather blog in the world. Over 250 million hits since it’s inception! Anthony, we are proud of you for achieving global recognition in pursuit of honest, unbiased, science.

Congratulations for your award and for bringing forth the truth on a subject that has been exploited and politicized by so many for their own personal gain and hidden agendas. You’ve discredited many of these climate change charlatans and in so doing, you’ve kept them out of our wallets. A job well done, indeed.

39 Responses to Anthony Watts from “Watts Up with That?” Receives Prestigious Award for His Work on Climate Change

A climate change conference sponsored by the oil companies. Isn’t that kind of like a conference on the Palestinian people sponsored by Newt Gingrich? It strikes me as an enormous waste of time and money to hold an entire conference on something that you don’t believe actually exists.

Anthony Watts is not a climate scientist. You’re right that his award is well deserved, because much like his entire body of work, it is entirely politicized.

Let’s take a look at just one of five organizations that fund the big-green-man-made-climate-change charlatans:

350.org was founded with the goal of uniting climate activists into a movement, with a strategy of bottom-up organizing around the world. Activists in 189 countries have organized 350.org’s local climate-focused campaigns, projects and actions. In India, for example, organizers have mobilized people to speak out against the country’s dependence on coal for growth. In the US, the group has campaigned to divest public institutions — such as municipalities and universities — from the fossil fuel industry, and to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.

Clearly there’s no special interest money to worry about here…right? I mean these are the people that believe that wind and solar can replace oil. They believe saving the planet is more important than having enough food on the table or heat in our homes and more important than the opportunity to work. These so-called geniuses haven’t thought much about the devastation their little toys and pipe dreams will cause if they get their way.

The biggest charlatans sell this crap as a movement to “save the planet” when it is actually a means to a sinister end: power in the hands of a few, high fuel prices, shrinking business/jobs opportunity, extremely high taxes, and a new world order that further erodes our sovereignty as a country and as individuals. The quality of life for most people will grossly decline; the people of poor nations will lose all opportunity to be uplifted out of poverty.

The green movement is the new home for communists and other tyrants who believe top down rule works best. It doesn’t as recent history tells us.

Moving forward legitimate scientists will work to see that our air and water remain clean and our planet alive and vibrant…the green movement has no such thing in mind. They are about power and control. As every good commie learns early in life, “The end justifies the means.” They want control and they don’t care the adverse consequences or how many people are hurt.

Americans have always been problem solvers! This includes people in the oil industry that have worked hard to make their products cheaper, cleaner, and available to people all over the world. Every home, every business, every hospital, every school, every charitable organization and yes even groups like green peace and 350.org rely on oil products every single day. The attack on oil is not only dangerous to people and other living things it is disingenuous, stupid, and thoughtless.

As for the 97% lie being perpetrated from big greens at NASA and Mr. John Kerry:

Alarming fairy tales regarding climate aren’t new but they do change through the decades. first we were all going to freeze, next the farmers would never be able to feed the worlds population…we needed population control, next the ozone layer would cause the Amazon Forest to disappear, next it was global warming which was changed to climate change, now we are told to be very afraid because the ice caps are melting and as a result ocean levels will rise to wipe out coastal cities. We’re told warming/climate change has changed weather patterns so that hurricanes hit more frequently and are much more deadly. History proves that little bit of alarmism is total bunk! Alarmist climate change bunk is political. Charlatan scientists want to keep their grants coming…organizations like Greenpeace want the donations to keep flowing in…follow their money too!

At least oil companies produce an actual product that’s not only useful but valuable and necessary.

Innovation is welcome. Forcing such innovation through the power of government is dangerous and costly. We would be wise to give our support to scientists and bloggers that are interested in solving problems through the scientific method and not through international hype and alarmism.

Anthony’s blog provides a wonderful arena for exposing the charlatans and for discussion by serious scientists. My congrats go out to Anthony.

“New world order,” “communists…” , Tina, if your goal is to show that the mainstream scientists who believe in AGW are just a bunch of radicals with a political agenda, it might help if you didn’t talk so much like a radical with a political agenda.

I would love to discuss the actual science with you, but in the past that has proven disastrous for you. Even here you reveal your lack of preparation to discuss this issue when you talk of “global cooling” and the ozone layer.

What you don’t know, because your right wing sources have lied to you, is that global cooling was NEVER a mainstream or commonly accepted theory in the scientific community. Even if you just bothered to read the intro on the Wikipedia page you would know that:

But people like Anthony Watts have misrepresented the claims of scientists from that period in order to cast doubt and mistrust on scientific climate projections in general. Now think about that: what kind of scientists actively work for the purpose of weakening the public’s trust in scientists?That is all the climate change skeptics have been doing for decades now, and they are lying in order to do it.

As for the ozone layer, it is no secret why the dire predictions of scientists didn’t pan out: it’s because we actually did something to fix the problem! Again, even thirty seconds of research would have told you this. This was Google result number five:

Using predictions about the ozone layer as an excuse for inaction is just about the most ignorant meme I’ve ever heard, yet it’s a common argument of those who refuse to acknowledge climate change. Scientists agree that this was a case of human beings taking action to reduce environmental damage. And it worked.

Tina, I have debunked the James Taylor article–and many others from that same author–more times than I can remember on this blog. Doing so again would be a waste of time. Sufficed to say, he is misrepresenting the study, as if his favorite pasttime.

As for the Newsbusters article, I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s misrepresenting the Prokorpy study, but it’s definitely leaving a lot out. Here is the table from the actual study:

As you can see, among climatologists, 53% said they agreed with the following statement:

“Climate change is occurring, and it is caused
mostly by human activities.”

Newsbusters got that part right. What they leave out is that an additional 37% said this:

“Climate change is occurring, and it is caused more or less equally by natural changes in the environment and human activities”

That means that a total of 90% of climatalogists polled believe that human beings are significantly contributing to climate change. Many also think natural changes are playing an equivalent role, but that is well within the mainstream of scientific thought on the issue, and a good ways away from the position of Anthony Watts, James Taylor, and the Heartland Institute, which is that human beings are having no noticeable affect on climate.

Only 5% of climatologists polled said that climate change was mostly caused by natural changes in the environment, and only 5% said that there was not enough evidence to know whether or not climate change was occuring.

0% of climatologists polled said that “climate change is not occuring.”

So the Prokorpy study clearly supports the idea that there is widespread consensus on anthropogenic global warming. It doesn’t weaken the consensus at all.

Now, you will probably respond with “consensus isn’t science,” which…fine. But then stop trying to deny that a consensus exists. Either consensus matters, or it doesn’t. 97% of scientists could be wrong. But you haven’t done a very good job of proving that they are.

Pie, the right has been trying to cherry-pick the NOAA’s data to argue a “cooling trend” for several years now (hi again, James Taylor!) Basic common sense and logic is enough to debunk this argument. You can’t just look at a decade-long period in the contiguous U.S. and argue that it disproves global warming. That’s absurd.

From the NOAA:

“The fact that globally averaged surface air temperature has shown no trend or even slight cooling over the last 7 years is not an accurate reflection of long-term general trends. In fact, calculation of a trend over the last seven years is a gross mischaracterization of the longer term trend.

The last seven years have been part of a strong warming trend that began in the 1970s, which is attributable to human influences (IPCC, 2007). During the last seven years six of the seven warmest years on record have been all been observed based on NOAA’s global land and ocean data. Deducing long-term trends over such a short period of time is comparable to estimating the height of a sea swell
by looking at the short period waves on top of the swell.

In addition to warming caused by greenhouse gases, the climate system also has natural variability, which is why one year’s temperature is different from the next. This natural variability also can result in the climate having short periods of cooling or no trend, even with strong overall warming due to increasing greenhouse gases. The table below, based on the analysis by Easterling and Wehner1, shows the probability that any ten year period will include negative trends of various magnitudes. Since 1975 there have been similar and longer periods of time where the globally averaged surface air temperature
showed a slight cooling (1977-1985 and 1981-1989), yet the climate has warmed more in the past 33 years than any other time in our instrumental record. The results of Easterling and Wehner’s analysis are consistent with the model simulations used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and show that during the 21st century climate can and likely will experience decadal periods
where the globally averaged surface air temperature show no trend or even cooling in the presence of a longer-term warming signal. Multiple decadal records are necessary in order to detect and attribute the effect of greenhouse gas increases in the climate system. These kinds of analyses have been performed extensively and reported on by the IPCC 2007 Assessments.”

“The climate of the U.S. Southeast, like that of any region, is influenced by many factors, including latitude, topography, and proximity to large bodies of water like the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Its climate varies considerably over seasons, years, and decades, largely due to natural cycles like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and North Atlantic and Arctic Oscillations, which can introduce cooler-than-usual conditions to the region during certain phases.

Researchers have also connected the cooling trend in the southeastern United States to periods of thick clouds and unusually high soil moisture. Thick clouds can decrease the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, and damp soil allows for high evaporation rates, preventing daytime temperatures from getting as warm as they otherwise might.

Despite cooling trends in some locations, temperatures across the U.S. Southeast are expected to increase over the next century, even as they fluctuate annually and decade-to-decade. This natural climate variability is the reason that, as the vast majority of the world warms, a few locations are cooling and many are warming even faster than the rest of the globe. It is also why every year, perhaps even every decade, won’t necessarily be warmer than the last.

When you filter out all of the natural ‘noise’ by averaging over large areas and long periods of time, however, the global warming trend is loud and clear. And of course, warming is also evident in a suite of other climate indicators, including loss of sea ice, glaciers, and ice sheets; increasing ocean heat content; rising sea level; and geographic shifts in the ranges of plants and animals on land and in the ocean.”

Chris I didn’t say the scientists were communist, although some may be. I said the green movement was the new home of communism/communists who exploit the issue for their own sinister purpose. The charlatan scientists had their own motivation: keep that grant money rolling in! Communication happens when you get what I say and not when you decide what I’ve said for the purpose of feeding the pictures in your head.

You love to disqualify others based on your closed mind, your politics, and your need to be the hall monitor.

Your ability to discuss the science is very limited but you present yourself as capable and well informed. Your observations are based, once again, on what you believe to be true and want to be true. Your mind is closed…and that’s not a scientist’s mind.

Why would anyone trust the word of a person who cannot communicate and sets himself up as informed based on his closed, lock-step mind?

Chris: “53% said they agreed with the following statement:

“Climate change is occurring, and it is caused
mostly by human activities.”

So much for the 97% of scientists claim!

Does our climate change naturally? That’s a huge possibility that green zealots like to ignore. They can’t explain how, during a period prior to the industrial age, the river Thames was frozen solid in winter. The great Oklahoma dust bowl occurred prior to the wide use of petroleum products and suggests that naturally occurring cycles are more likely the major cause of climate change.

The problem with you nut bags on the left is your massive egos; you imagine yourselves to be superior so therefore your ideas MUST BE RIGHT!

Human power to effect “dangerous change” on the earth is very limited compared to the enormous power of natural forces…true? I think so and haven;t seen any evidence that scientists that have been shown to be liars and cheaters are willing to consider the possibility. that alone disqualifies them and their opinions!

Chris is just another blubbering, goosestepping fool who, because he cannot actually argue the “science” or examine it with a critical eye turns to character assassination and casting slurs of others who do closely examine it for the flaws and outright frauds in the data manipulation by NASA, NOAA, and others.

It makes no sense to argue with this slur mongering scum, what little brains he has have been thoroughly washed.

Mark Steyn, who has been sued by the infamous arrogant, screwball dirt bag Michael Mann who tried to erase the Medieval Warm Period and launched a campaign to destroy the reputations of the scientists who discovered it, had this to report back in 2010 —

Climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by human activities.”

You then wrote, “So much for the 97% of scientists claim!”

This blatantly–and rudely–ignores everything I wrote after the quoted portion.

As I explained to you, an additional 37% of climate scientists said that “Climate change is occurring, and it is caused more or less equally by natural changes in the environment and human activities.”

That is a total of 90% of climate scientists that believe that human activity plays a significant role in climate change.

Only 5% said that climate change is mostly a result of natural changes in the environment. Another 5% said there wasn’t enough evidence to be sure if climate change is happening.

No climatologists polled said that climate changed wasn’t occurring.

Clearly, this study supports the many previous studies showing that there is broad consensus that human activity plays a significant role in climate change. It also supports the fact that those who deny this are in a very small minority in the scientific community.

You said, “So much for the 97% of scientists claim!” But you apparently thought that the claim was that 97% of scientists think humans are “mostly” responsible for climate change. That is not the case. What the Cook paper identifies as the “consensus” is that humans are making a SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION to climate change. Those that said humans and natural changes are “more or less equally” causing climate change are within the consensus.

You’ve been trying to disprove the 97% consensus claim, but you apparently didn’t even know what that claim actually was.

Once again: the Prokorpy study does not significantly contradict the Cook study. It mostly supports it. 90% is less than 97%, but it’s still a consensus. The 53% number does not fully capture the percentage of scientists that agreed with the consensus view in the Prokorpy study. When factoring in those who said human activity and natural changes are equally important, the number is 90%.

This is also close to the number found by many other studies which have found a scientific consensus on the issue.

The main disagreement among scientists seems to be whether climate change is mostly caused by humans, or if it’s 50/50 humans and nature. That is NOT the he debate Watts et al are involved in. They are questioning whether or not humans are causing climate change at all, and whether climate change is even happening. As the Prokorpy study shows, their view is a small minority.

Now that you know what the Prokorpy study actually says, I expect you to turn against it and put Prokorpy in with all the other scientists you believe are just greedy con artists. You’ll do so without even trying to understand the methodology, of course, but that is still better than misrepresenting the study and using it to support your minority view, when in fact the study actually supports the consensus.

Meteorology noun the science dealing with the atmosphere and its phenomena, including weather and climate

Anthony Watts a renown and respected meteorologist whose IT Works company supplies TV and radio stations with state of the art meterological reprting tools

Chris A virtually unknown, arrogant, rude, dimwitted, malicious, politically motivated, slur mongering English Major who frequents blog sites berating others and is more enamored with casting aspersions on respectable people than with educating himself. Synonym — despicable.

And Jack, isn’t the city council looking over the “sustainability” plan to cut carbon right about now? (Check out this week’s ER article.)

What are the so-called conservatives going to do about the AGW fraud the so-called Sustainability Task Force is peddling? Why don’t the so-called conservatives get rid of the Sustainability Task Force and save the taxpayer a small fortune?

Mark my word, they will not do that. Just like they will do nothing to repeal the bag ban. Totally useless.

It isn’t just that charlatan scientists think man/oil/coal is the majority cause for climate change; it’s that the political charlatans, in league with the charlatan scientists, are using the issue to create a world wide taxing body, to demand unreasonable regulation compliance that kills jobs and the economy, and to taint the minds of children through educational and entertainment propaganda. The alarmist tone alone should send up red flags.

There is no excuse for this irresponsible/sinister behavior.

And by the way we should remember that the term “global warming” was replaced with the term “climate change” by charlatans because of evidence that showed warming was not happening. The new term allows the glo-warm charlatans to blame humans whether the earth is warming or cooling.

Do you actually believe that only .3% of climate scientists believe AGW is occurring? Or are you simply saying that that number is as reliable (and equally flawed) as the 97% number?

I hope it’s the latter, since that position could actually be discussed, and there’s a chance that evidence could dissuade you from your position. If it’s the former, then there is no possibility of any amount of evidence persuading you; to believe that only .3% of climate scientists believe in AGW would be completely disconnected from reality. It’s simply impossible for that to be true.

Care to clarify before we proceed? I’d love to defend the methodology of the Cook study and show how the methodology behind the .3% number is absurd, and to show you the many other studies–including the one cited by Tina in a misguided attempt to contradict the notion of consensus–which back up he Cook paper. But first I would like to know if that would be a waste of my time.

So again: do you really believe that only .3% of climate scientists believe in AGW?

Why did you completely ignore the way you and Newbusters misrepresented the Prokopy study in your last comment?

I explained to you–twice–how that study did not say what you claimed it said. Instead of admitting error, or engaging at all, you chose to move on to discussing the political and economic side of this debate. You always do this.

Why not just come out and say “I will not discuss the science because I cannot discuss the science. My beliefs about global warming are entirely based on my poltical and economic ideology. I don’t like the political and economical effects that would follow from global warming’s existence, therefore, I will not accept it?”

This would be far more honest than your continued cycle of “Cite right-wing blogs misrepresenting science, repeat the false claim even after being caught, ignore every single counter-argument against my position ever made, repeat.”

“And by the way we should remember that the term “global warming” was replaced with the term “climate change” by charlatans because of evidence that showed warming was not happening.”

This is not true. This has never been true. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

It always cracks me up when conspiracy theorists claim that there has been a switch from saying “global warming” to “climate change,” and that this is part of some Orwellian newspeak conspiracy.

In reality, though the terms are often used interchangeably, climate change is simply a broader term that encompasses the effects of what is happening beyond just the warming trend. NASA explains:

“In place of inadvertent climate modification, Charney adopted Broecker’s usage. When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used “global warming.” When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used “climate change.”
Definitions

Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth.

Within scientific journals, this is still how the two terms are used. Global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect.”

Chris, just curious to know if you have visited Anthony Watts website? If you haven’t you might want to take a look. I get where you are coming from, but I think there has been a lot of alarmist propaganda involved with the science of climate change. Would you acknowledge that?

Jack, I’ve visited Watts Up With That many times. I find most of his work to be just as shoddy as the Newsbusters piece I took issue with earlier. He constantly misrepresents mainstream scientists and their methodology while hyping the conclusions of a tiny minority. As far as I know he’s the origin of the claim that the Cook paper actually shows .3% of climatologists believe in AGW rather than 97%, which is absurd. His critiques don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Do you or do you not believe that only .3% of climate scientists believe in AGW?

As for the videos you linked to, the first is thirty minutes long, and the second is an hour and fifteen minutes. Furthermore, prior to linking to those very long videos, you insulted me by calling me “brainwashed.” Of course I didn’t watch them. It’s completely unreasonable of you to expect that anyone would, given their length and your insulting tone.

If you have an actual argument against the Cook paper, make it. Linking to two lengthy videos and then essentially saying “gotcha!” when someone you have just insulted has neither the time nor the inclination to watch them is not an argument.

As I said, I am well acquainted with the arguments against the Cook paper, and the ways in which they do not hold up. If you would like to discuss this issue, then make an argument. Don’t insult me, link to super-long videos, and then get huffy that I haven’t watched them. Don’t refuse to answer direct, simple, and fair questions. Be intellectually honest.

Pity Chris is a liar and a malicious fool who, because he cannot actually argue the issue in an informed and intelligent manner, attacks the motivations and character of those with whom he disagrees. Chris is the paradigm of the left wing feces. A human dog bomb that sticks to the shoe, but not for long. He is easily wiped off.

Re Bob (addendum): Chris’ only claim to fame is being a rude and obscure left wing extremist nobody posing as erudite in a blog where he consistently berates others, including the authors, and is roundly and rightly despised by 99.999999% of participants in the comments section.

Pie Guevara: “Pity Chris is a liar and a malicious fool who, because he cannot actually argue the issue in an informed and intelligent manner, attacks the motivations and character of those with whom he disagrees.”

Is this a freaking joke?

The only person who has even attempted to discuss the methodology of studies in this thread, so far, is me.

Tina cited an article misrepresenting a survey of scientists. I demonstrated, in very clear detail, why that survey did not say what she and Newsbusters claimed it said.

Did she engage with any of these points? No. Instead she moved on to completely irrelevant details about how accepting climate change affects economic policy.

Then Bob started criticizing the Cook paper, but didn’t actually say anything about what his specific criticisms of it was, even though I have asked him to explain his argument many times.

Has he bothered to explain his critiques? No. Instead he insulted me, then linked to two very long videos, then insulted me again.

You are the absolute worst. You’ve not managed to leave a single comment in this thread that was not a personal attack on me. (I’m really curious about what “v—– j—–” stands for.) You have offered precisely zero substantive arguments. I have countered Bob and Tina’s comments with rational arguments and relevant questions.

You are clearly incapable of doing the same.

The most hilarious and delusional part of your rantings is accusing me of being a liar for stating that I’ve read Anthony Watts’ blog many times. Like, what could you POSSIBLY be basing that on?

That you could even DARE to accuse others of being unable to “argue the issue in an informed and intelligent manner,” and even more laughably, “attack[ing] the motivations and character of those with whom he disagrees” reveals how little self-awareness you have. This describes your behavior to a tee. You never bother engaging with the arguments of your opponents–name-calling is your first and only response. I’m not perfect but I at least try to explain why a certain argument is illogical or silly. You don’t even bother.

You are nothing but a troll, and some day you are going to cross a line that even your buddies here can’t and won’t defend.

Chris: “I explained to you–twice–how that study did not say what you claimed it said. Instead of admitting error, or engaging at all, you chose to move on to discussing the political and economic side of this debate.”

The political/economic side is all that matters when you consider the damage to health, prosperity, and quality of life that the radical greens’ demands will cause!!!

You “explained” in terms of how the left justifies itself. All this proves is the arrogance of the left.

Global warming alarmists and their allies in the liberal media have been caught doctoring the results of a widely cited paper asserting there is a 97-percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming. After taking a closer look at the paper, investigative journalists report the authors’ claims of a 97-pecent consensus relied on the authors misclassifying the papers of some of the world’s most prominent global warming skeptics. At the same time, the authors deliberately presented a meaningless survey question so they could twist the responses to fit their own preconceived global warming alarmism.

Global warming alarmist John Cook, founder of the misleadingly named blog site Skeptical Science, published a paper with several other global warming alarmists claiming they reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. Cook reported that he and his colleagues found that 97 percent of the papers that expressed a position on human-caused global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. The question Cook and his alarmist colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans have caused some global warming. The question is meaningless regarding the global warming debate because most skeptics as well as most alarmists believe humans have caused some global warming. The issue of contention dividing alarmists and skeptics is whether humans are causing global warming of such negative severity as to constitute a crisis demanding concerted action.

The politicized left global warming zealots have been shown to be deceivers of the highest magnitude willing to perpetrate fraud on the entire planet to extract money and gain power. Wall Street doesn’t hold a candle to this bunch that uses the force of government to extract taxes from working folks and force crippling regulations on the businesses that hire them.

If a single scientists is skeptical the entire community has an obligation to refrain from making hard conclusions. That’s the way science has always worked.

Radical AGW scientists are not putting science or truth first. they are putting politics and money first. The charlatans dismiss those who have opposing views as “deniers,” a disparaging term meant to disqualify them not only in the science community but politically. I have zero respect for them. I have lost respect for you due to your undying defense of the political radicals in the face of alternate evidence offered by well respected, highly qualified scientists.

The survey by Australian global-warming activist John Cook, released recently with a massive media sendoff, is rapidly melting, as scientists and statisticians subject it to analysis. And now it’s leaking out that Cook’s e-mails show he was scheming on this fraudulent survey to promote a leftist political agenda for well over a year. Cook made a big media splash in May with the publication of a study by him and several co-authors claiming to prove that climate scientists overwhelmingly support the theory that human activity is warming the planet to dangerous levels. Cook’s claims received their biggest boost on May 16, when President Barack Obama tweeted: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree:#climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

The mainstream media and climate-alarmist blogosphere uncritically accepted the Cook study and trumpeted the consensus claims as gospel. We reported on May 21 (“Global Warming ‘Consensus’: Cooking the Books”) on the critiques of the Cook study by experts who show that Cook cooked the data. Out of the nearly 12,000 scientific papers Cook’s team evaluated, only 65 endorsed Cook’s alarmist position. That’s less than one percent, not 97 percent. Moreover, as we reported, the Cook study was flawed from the beginning, using selection parameters designed to weight the outcome in favor of the alarmist position.

In a May 22 follow-up article (“Climate ‘Consensus’ Con Game: Desperate Effort Before Release of UN Report”) The New American reported on additional problems with the Cook study and cited a large and growing list of eminent climate scientists — including Nobel Prize recipients and scientists who served on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — who challenge the claim that there is any “scientific consensus” on climate change, or that “the science is settled” in favor of the Al Gore alarmist position.

Oops! Guess We Forgot Those

Now comes another devastating analysis of Cook’s cooked data from a big name in the climate science community: Professor Richard S. J. Tol. Dr. Tol is a professor of the economics of climate change at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and a professor of economics at the University of Sussex, England. He has also served on the UN’s IPCC.

Professor Tol utilizes four graphs to demonstrate the biased methods utilized by the Cook team to skew the results of their “research.” One of the major “errors” of the study (whether intentional or the result of incompetence) was the use of the term “global climate change” to search the scientific database for papers that were included in the 12,000 tabulated by Cook and his co-authors. … Populartechnology.net has posted e-mails from John Cook’s Skeptical Science website concerning what Cook calls “The Consensus Project” or TCP. The e-mails, from early 2012, reveal the huge promotional campaign Cook was rolling out to publicize the consensus study — before he had even done the study. It is also evident from the e-mails that Cook knew he was cooking the data to reach a preconceived conclusion. In his “Introduction to TCP” e-mail of January 19, 2012, Cook explains to team members:

It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW [anthropogenic (man-made) global warming]. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus. Deniers like to portray the myth that the consensus is crumbling, that the tide is turning.

Right from the get-go, it is apparent that Cook is planning to cook up a “game changing” study that will prove the “scientific consensus” he wants the public to accept. Typical of Cook and activists of his ilk is their use of “deniers” when referring to their opposition, an attempt to smear scientists who hold different opinions by equating them with Nazi holocaust deniers. It is hardly the mark of professional civility and collegiality one expects from true scientists.

Tina: “The political/economic side is all that matters when you consider the damage to health, prosperity, and quality of life that the radical greens’ demands will cause!!!”

But the political/economic side does NOT matter to the question of whether or not the theory of AGW is factually true. “Global warming doesn’t exist” does not logically follow from the proposition that “Accepting the existence of global warming will cause negative economic effects.”

Do you agree that this conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from that proposition?

“You “explained” in terms of how the left justifies itself. All this proves is the arrogance of the left.”

I have no idea what this statement is supposed to mean, or how it addresses my point about you and Newsbusters misrepresenting the findings of the Prokopy study.

I feel that you are trying very, very hard to avoid addressing this point.

So let me just ask you, unambiguously:

Do you now understand that the Prokopy study did not say what you claimed it said? Do you understand that, far from contradicting the notion of consensus among climate scientists, the Prokopy study backed up this notion by concluding that 90% of climate scientists believe that humans are significantly contributing to climate change?

If so, are you now saying that the Prokopy study is invalid, even though you previously touted it when you thought it confirmed what you already believed?

If you are saying that, what is your basis for changing your opinion on the Prokopy study? Are you only rejecting it because you realized you don’t like the conclusions?

Bonus questions: would you like to defend your earlier claims about the ozone layer, “global cooling,” and the reasons for differentiating between the terms “global warming” and “climate change”–all three claims I have shown were false with scientific evidence? Or would you simply like to move on from those topics?

“The e-mails, from early 2012, reveal the huge promotional campaign Cook was rolling out to publicize the consensus study — before he had even done the study. It is also evident from the e-mails that Cook knew he was cooking the data to reach a preconceived conclusion. In his “Introduction to TCP” e-mail of January 19, 2012, Cook explains to team members:

It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW [anthropogenic (man-made) global warming]. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus. Deniers like to portray the myth that the consensus is crumbling, that the tide is turning.”

This is patently ridiculous.

The New American’s smoking gun that Cook’s study is invalid is that…he formed a hypothesis before doing the study? It is to laugh. This e-mail is not even remotely scandalous. It’s what all scientists do. In order to show that the study is invalid, critics must show that the methodology is wrong.

To be fair, many have tried to do just that. In your Forbes link, James Taylor writes:

“As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. The question Cook and his alarmist colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans have caused some global warming. The question is meaningless regarding the global warming debate because most skeptics as well as most alarmists believe humans have caused some global warming. The issue of contention dividing alarmists and skeptics is whether humans are causing global warming of such negative severity as to constitute a crisis demanding concerted action.”

This critique strikes me as disengenuous. Many climate change skeptics–including James Taylor–have argued that humans may not be causing global warming at all.

Finally, the New American article primarily relies on the critiques of Dr. Richard Tol. The authors of the Cook study have responded to his critiques here:

“There have been a number of contrarians claiming that they are part of the 97% consensus, which they believe is limited to the position that humans are causing some global warming. The first error in this argument is in ignoring the fact that the data collected in Cook et al. (2013) included categories that quantify the human contribution, as Andrew Montford and the GWPF recently did, for example.

The second error has been made by individuals claiming they’re in the 97%, but failing to actually check the data. For example, Roy Spencer claimed in testimony to US Congress that he is included in the 97% consensus. Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer’s abstracts here. Five of his papers were captured in our literature search; we categorized four as ‘no opinion’ on the cause of global warming, and one as implicitly minimizing the human influence. Thus Spencer’s research was included in the fewer than 3 percent of papers that either rejected or minimized the human contribution to global warming. Bjorn Lomborg made a similar error, claiming:

“Virtually everyone I know in the debate would automatically be included in the 97% (including me, but also many, much more skeptical).”

In reality Lomborg is included neither in the 97+% nor the less than 3% because as far as we can tell, he has not published any peer-reviewed climate research, and thus none of his writings were captured in our literature search. The 97% is a consensus of climate science experts, and that, Lomborg is not.

Nir Shaviv took the opposite approach, claiming he was wrongly included in the 97%. Though Shaviv also admitted that Cook et al. correctly classified his abstracts based on their content, but claimed that he worded the text in a way to slip it past the journal reviewers and editors.

“I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”

However, Shaviv, Spencer, and all other authors were invited to participate in the self-ratings process that resulted in the sae 97% consensus conclusion.

Tol’s Rejected Comment
Richard Tol has also advanced various criticisms of Cook et al. (2013). It’s worth noting that Tol does not dispute the existence of the consensus, writing:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.”

Tol has nevertheless criticized the methods applied during the Cook et al. survey. For example, he has argued that the literature search should have been conducted with Scopus rather than the Web of Science in order to capture more papers, but also that fewer papers should have been included in the survey in order to focus on those specifically researching the causes of global warming. Tol has also applied various statistical tests comparing the abstract ratings to the author self-ratings, but these tests are invalid because the two phases of the survey considered different information (abstracts only vs. full papers) and are thus not comparable.

In fact, when we released the self-rating data, we explicitly discussed the difference between the two datasets and how the difference was actually instructive. As John Cook wrote,

“That’s not to say our ratings of abstracts exactly matched the self-ratings by the papers’ authors. On the contrary, the two sets measure different things and not only are differences expected, they’re instructive.”

Ultimately Tol submitted his criticisms to Environmental Research Letters as a comment, but the submission was summarily rejected by the editor who described it as a speculative opinion piece that does not identify any clear errors that would call the paper’s conclusions into question.

In short, the 97% consensus has passed peer-review, while Tol’s criticisms have not. Moreover, all of Tol’s criticisms only apply to the abstract ratings, while the self-ratings also found the same 97% consensus result, completely independent from the abstract ratings.”

The article I linked to above also rebuts Bob’s claim that only .3% of climate scientists endorse the theory of AGW. Essentially, this number is based on taking the number of abstracts which explicitly endorsed AGW, and dividing it by all 12000 abstracts looked at in the Cook paper, even those that expressed no opinion on AGW. This is obviously terrible methodology. The superior mehtodology would be to divide the number of abstracts which explicitly endorsed AGW by the number of abstracts which expressed any opinion on AGW. That’s exactly what the Cook paper did. To insist that Monckton’s methodology is superior to Cook’s is simply to reveal oneself as statistically illiterate.

“One critique of the consensus has been published in a paper in the journal Science & Education. The argument made in the paper was first published by Christopher Monckton on a climate contrarian blog. Monckton has also suggested the conspiracy theory that the journal Environmental Research Letters was created (in 2006) specifically for the purpose of publishing Cook et al. (2013).

The Monckton paper takes the point about quantification above to the extreme. It focuses exclusively on the papers that quantified human-caused global warming, and takes these as a percentage of all 12,000 abstracts captured in the literature search, thus claiming the consensus is not 97%, but rather 0.3%. The logical flaws in this argument should be obvious, and thus should not have passed through the peer-review process.

Approximately two-thirds of abstracts did not take a position on the causes of global warming, for various reasons (e.g. the causes were simply not relevant to or a key component of their specific research paper). Thus in order to estimate the consensus on human-caused global warming, it’s necessary to focus on the abstracts that actually stated a position on human-caused global warming.

When addressing the consensus regarding humans being responsible for the majority of recent global warming, the same argument holds true for abstracts that do not quantify the human contribution. We simply can’t know their position on the issue – that doesn’t mean they endorse or reject the consensus position; they simply don’t provide that information, and thus must first be removed before estimating the quantified consensus.

As noted above, when we perform this calculation, the consensus position that humans are the main cause of global warming is endorsed in 87% of abstracts and 96% of full papers. Monckton’s argument is very similar to the myth that CO2 can’t cause significant global warming because it only comprises 0.04% of the atmosphere. 99% of the atmosphere is comprised of non-greenhouse gases, but these other gases are irrelevant to the question of the CO2 greenhouse effect. The percentage of CO2 as a fraction of all gases in the atmosphere is an irrelevant figure, as is the percentage of abstracts quantifying human-caused global warming as a percentage of all abstracts captured in our literature search.

It’s also worth noting that based on Monckton’s logic, only 0.08% of abstracts reject human-caused global warming.”

That last sentence is incredibly important; even if you use Monckton’s methodology, the amount of climate scientists endorsing AGW is still many times greater than the amount rejecting the theory.

And, as previously stated, Cook’s numbers have been replicated–or at least closely matched–in numerous other studies, including the Prokopy study which Newsbusters falsely claimed contradicted the consensus. That study found that 90% of climatologists believe that humans have significantly contributed to global warming.

Finally, denying that there is a scientific consensus on this issue is far more ridiculous than denying the theory of AGW itself. Every governmental and major scientific body in the world accepts the theory of AGW. It is simply absurd to argue that a majority of climate scientists do not accept this theory.

Now, of course, climate contrarians are free to argue that the consensus is wrong, and that their minority is correct. They can argue that consensus doesn’t prove the theory of AGW, which is technically correct. But arguing that there is no consensus is simply incorrect, as multiple valid studies have proven conclusively.

So once again I have attempted to engage the climate contrarians here in a fact-based debate involving in-depth analysis of statistical data, and once again I am greeted first with insults, then with denial, then with silence. This always follows the same predictable pattern.